Nearly back to normal?

I had my ECG this morning. I also found out the results of my latest Cholesterol test. Remember, I was always about 4.2 until January of this year when I suddenly went up to 10.1. Panic! Various remedies  put into action and another test done about three weeks ago. Well, it's now down to 2.1 and I am ecstatic. I shall, of course, continue to use the fat free diet as my basic guideline but now I can indulge my taste for bacon, eggs and sausage again. At the same time, my pulse has also improved and now stands at 57 bpm which is very nearly back to my usual 62.

Two forward, one back.

And then forward again.

The updates didn't take anyway so I had to do them all over again. As an interesting aside, how many registry changes do you think it makes updating Win7 64 bit from new install to up to date.....................44290!

The touch screen works really well but now poses another problem, The cable can no longer provide enough power to drive both the monitor and touchscreen. I am now in the process of buying more bits in order to power the thing properly. In addition, cable went down on Friday and didn't come back permanently until Saturday evening.

And there's more!

Me 'an my big mouth. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to persuade the remote monitor to work the way I wanted it to. No joy so I tried it on a shorter cable. That works fine so, it seems, the new Win7 specific drivers require more power to do their thing. Or, I have just thought, the new touchscreen driver is actually working now and obviously requires power to do its thing. Anyway, I have ordered a new power supply to drive the screen independently and that should solve that problem.
On another, but related, area Sal and I managed to get a lot of rubbish to the tip this afternoon with the option of more tomorrow or Monday.

Let joy be unconfined!

Image via Wikipedia

Not only have I got the audio working correctly now, I also have the new Win7 touchscreen drivers installed, all Widows updates and I have installed Free AVG and all the updates for it. The windows updates were a bit of a problem as I didn't start them intentionally and there were 70 of them that insisted on running before the PC would shut down. As I was running on battery at the time and due back at my desk within five minutes, it was both a concern and embarrassing.

What makes you think there is a problem?

I went to see Occupational Health today. Yet another take on my health and completely different to what I have already heard. It's as I have said in the past, I feel very well, I have never had any pain and I enjoy leading a normal life. I occasionally have a glitch in my system, I have a minor one at the moment, but I always get things checked out and I let my family and colleagues know what is happening. Any problems so far have been rapidly fixed by the relevant medical persons and I trundle on in my own sweet way. On Saturday, I was told that 60 to 68 was a normal heart rate and today I have been informed that 50 to 100 is perfectly acceptable. Who do I believe? Who cares? I feel fine and my GP is organising some tests in the background to make sure I continue to feel fine.

On another note, why does Zemanta keep offering me American links and images that bear no relationship to my life or where I live. I must presume that it is an American company and, like a lot of Americans, the rest of us have no bearing in their world. Rant over.

I just love it when a plan comes together............

The A Team.

The carputer is a reality! The OS has picked up all of the drivers correctly, apart from the touchscreen one for the second monitor and I know why that is. The whole thing is now working very well apart from the audio output which isn't but appears to be a cable or monitor fault rather than software. In fact, more is now working correctly than ever before as I have the new GPS mouse running on Auto-Route 2010 and it's very, very good, certainly the most effective GPS I have ever used.

Why are computers such a pain?

I needed to do such a simple job, to install a new OS on the car computer. The reason was that the old drive had died due to a combination of very low temperatures and being shaken up whilst driving. So I bought a shiny new solid state drive and tried to run the install to it from a USB drive. Making the USB drive was fairly easy as Microsoft have produced a piece of software that automates the whole thing. So, yesterday, off I went to install to the new drive installed in the camper. Total failure. The complaint was that NTLDR was missing. As I was installing Win7 that doesn't use NTLDR, this was farcical. So today, I have been obliged to bring the drive to work, insert it into a laptop and run the install from a disc. I was impressed with the speed, about forty minutes from beginning to end including a full format on a 64GB drive, but regretted the necessity for it. I will re-build the carputer this evening and install the drivers and hardware again.

Thirty years on.........

Today's the day, married for thirty years and don't regret a single year of it. The other twenty-nine.................

JOKE!

We've had a good life together so far and, with luck, will have plenty more years yet. There have, of course, been a few ripples in our pond but none serious enough to cause permanent damage. We have always tried to keep to the maxim, 'Forgive and forget' and, so far it's worked for us.

For several weeks, I have warned Hazel against spending very much money on a present for me and she obliged by buying me three paperback books, Mrs Bradley Mysteries. I, in turn, bought her a very nice gold necklace with a pearl on it. When she complained, I pointed out that the main reason for the ban on her spending money was because I had spent so much. The reason for the pearl, of course, is because the thirtieth anniversary is considered to be the pearl anniversary.

Diana Rigg as Mrs BradleyImage by apple apple via Flickr

The National Health

Service is getting me down.

In some areas, it is amazingly on the ball. In others, it is falling at the first hurdle. For example;

• From the age of 60, elderly gents like myself are offered a test for colon cancer every two years. My latest has just arrived! This is fine apart from the minor detail of it being such an unpleasant procedure.
• Two letters from my GP, one requesting that I take an annual eye test and have the results sent to the surgery for keeping in my record. The other to ask me to make an appointment to have my medication check. Once again, very reasonable.
• It took the Royal Eye Infirmary nearly a full week to supply my GP with official notification of my change of eye drops. Even then, they didn't specify the particular version and GP assumed the lower dose and I was supposed to have the slightly higher dose. Fortunately, the dispenser and the doctor I saw about it took a more helpful attitude and got it changed quickly.
• The results of my cholesterol test of last week are still not in and so I have not yet found out whether it was a glitch or a reason to go on with my current diet permanently. 
• After my INR blood test this week, I had my blood pressure and pulse rate taken. BP is fine but my pulse is very low, 50-51. So now I have to have an ECG just to make sure I'm still alive.

There's good news and there's bad news.

Hazel saw the doctor yesterday, bad news. It is rheumatoid arthritis and she will have to go on some serious drugs for it. She's  a bit down at the moment and, from my own experience, she will be for a time. It's not as bad as it could be as, so far, the only badly affected area is her knee and they hope to be able to minimise the effects everywhere else whilst treating that. The doctor did show her some horror pictures of worst case stuff and told her it was extremely unlikely she would ever be that bad. All it did was to scare her more I suspect. Lulu got her results back on the same day and she is clear of any infection and there seems to be no damage so one story has a happy ending at least. 

Related articles

• Rheumatoid Arthritis and Heart Health (everydayhealth.com)

Q: When is an emergency not an emergency?

A: When you book your call over a week hence.

Dyno-Rod treat any visit that is less than one week away as an emergency, and charge more for it. I think this is grabbing the pee a bit. Surely normal office hours or "When is the next free appointment" should not be an emergency? Rant over.
Slight problems with my INR this week, up to 4.1. I worried for a second and then remembered that this was a 'fasting' check for my lipid count as well. Thirteen hours with only water can do all sorts to you blood. I suspect I will now be in and out of the surgery for a month until it settles again. Roll on the new drug that dispenses with the need for warfarin and the subsequent blood sample testing.
I've just read up on this drug and I now realise how expensive it is, £2.50 per day! Warfarin is nearer £12.00  per year. I suspect we will all be on warfarin for a long time to come, sigh!

When bank accounts go bad!!!

Is usually when you hammer them. I am currently hammering ours a lot. We have had a problem with the wagon, £150.00 then a gas bill of £350.00. Now there is a drain problem at the childrens house that will require Dyno-Rod to fix. At least the vehicle is MOT'd and the water rates are being paid. The drain problem may be simple or expensive, we shall see.

Judgment day?

I took janis to have an MOT yesterday and she failed on a couple of points. One was a problem with a headlight that may just be an earthing fault. The other was the rear brakes that were rebuilt only a month ago! Not, I hasten to add, the same problem. That was well and truly sorted out but the MOT has thrown up a problem with the synchronisation of the two rear brakes which is a little worrying. The garage have her today and they feel that it should not be too complicated to fix the problem. I just hope they are correct.

Metalwork gone!

The knee is now staple free and looking very nice and healthy. Already, the size has reduced considerably and is itching almost continuously. That's a good sign, by the way. Major amounts of exercise have been undertaken and all the various rules have been obeyed so it seems that Hazel is heading for a very well deserved recovery. Corey is also not too bad, he was sent home by the hospital for being 'too young to treat' for his bad chest and is still very bubbly in his breathing although his cough has nearly gone now and he is sleeping much better than previously.

I am still losing inches at a considerable rate and I am, today, wearing a pair of trousers that were bought a couple of years ago and never worn because they were too small around the waist. They now need a belt in order to stay up around my waist. This all sounds very nice but I am concerned that I may be overdoing the weight loss thing a bit much. The trouble is, I'm not really doing anything drastic to achieve this reduction. All I have done is, essentially, cut out saturated fats as much as possible. I have also treated myself to an anti cholesterol yoghurt drink every day and a drink of Beroca  at some time during most days. I am still eating well, more than before most days, and not really feeling hungry very often. Maybe I have a tapeworm?

Having now read the above, it should be noted that the metalwork that is gone is merely the staple metalwork as seen in the photo. The new joint, inside the knee and therefore not visible, is a combination of metal and ceramics and will stay in situ until replaced in 15 to 20 years time.

Image via Wikipedia